Saturday, September 17, 2016

Texas: Family of Austin man on death row hopes new DNA analysis will reopen case

Delia Perez Meyer says her brother, Louis Castro Perez, is among the death row inmates who received a Brady notice stating his case could be compromised due to new DNA information. Meyer hopes reanalysis will prove her brother's innocence.

"That picture's been sitting there for 18 years," Meyer says while pointing to the center of her kitchen table, where you'll find the center of her world. "It's 99.9 % of my life."

Meyer said defending her brother's innocence has become her life's work.

"We've just been fighting."

Perez is on Texas death row for the 1998 murders of 31-year-old Michelle Fulwiler, 38-year-old Cinda Barz and Barz's 9-year-old daughter, Staci Mitchell. The women worked for the Travis County Juvenile Probation Department, and evidence indicated Louis fatally beat the women with a cast iron skillet and strangled the young girl in their Austin home.

"I have never thrown away one shred of evidence that I thought may help my brother someday," Meyer says.

Now, some of the DNA evidence is under review. It was last fall when the Perez family and his attorney received a letter from the Travis County District Attorney's Office, outlining issues the Texas Commission on Forensic Science found with the way DNA was analyzed. It could impact cases across the state, including those like Perez's, where DPS analyzed the DNA evidence.

Upon receiving the letter, Perez's attorney says she immediately requested a re-analysis.

"Now, 18 years later, Louis' case is not the only one that was possibly messed up."

As KXAN reported 2 weeks ago, legal experts say it was a change in scientific standards that's prompting the unprecedented statewide analysis. The issue is not with the actual testing of what are called DNA mixtures, but rather, with the probabilities scientists generate. Prosecutors often use these probabilities as evidence of the degree of the tests' conclusiveness.

DNA mixtures are cases where evidence from a crime scene contains 2 or more persons DNA profiles.

"I think the science evolved in the area of how to calculate the frequency that certain DNA profiles appear at random in the population," said Bob Wicoff, director of the Texas DNA Mixture Review Project.

Meyer says as she looks forward, she can't help but flash back to where it all began: in court, the day her brother was given the death penalty.

Her last words to her brother were, "I know at some point the truth is going to come out."

"And I think maybe we're closer to the truth now than ever before," says Meyer.

Source: KXAN news, September 17, 2016

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I oppose the death penalty in all cases, unconditionally, regardless of the method chosen to kill the condemned prisoner.
The death penalty is inherently cruel and degrading, a cruel punishment that is incompatible with human dignity.
To end the death penalty is to abandon a destructive diversionary and divisive public policy that is not consistent with widely held values.
The death penalty not only runs the risk of irrevocable error, it is also costly to the public purse as well as in social and psychological terms.
The death penalty has not been proved to have a special deterrent effect.
It tends to be applied in a discriminatory way on grounds of race and class.
It denies the possibility of reconciliation and rehabilitation.
It prolongs the suffering of the murder victim's family and extends that suffering to the loved ones of the condemned prisoner.
It diverts resources that could be better used to work against violent crime and assist those affected by it.
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